Part of the Kiwi Edge AI Stack | Founder OS: NZ-Start-Up | Agent policy: .github/agent-fleet/
Sovereign hybrid edge AI for NZ farms and founders - local-first + multi-model, Te Mana Raraunga aligned - collaborating with Venture Taranaki, startups.com investors and Kotahitanga Investment Fund (HITL + cultural advisory for formal approaches).
Agents inform, draft, prepare, monitor, and remind. Humans advise, sign, file, send, and pay.
Anti-hallucination policy: .github/agent-fleet/anti-hallucination.md | Congruence: CAT_CONGRUENCE.md
Coastal Alpine Tech products treat operational and personal data as taonga. Defaults favour local-first operation, purpose-limited collection, and Human-in-the-Loop for high-stakes actions.
| Commitment | Statement |
|---|---|
| No data sales | We do not sell personal information or customer operational data to third parties for advertising, brokerage, or unrelated commercial exploitation. |
| NZ Privacy Act 2020 | Collection, use, storage, and disclosure of personal information is designed to operate in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 information privacy principles (including IPP awareness and IPP 3A indirect-collection notification where applicable). |
| Te Mana Raraunga | Where Māori data or community data interests arise, systems are designed to operate in accordance with Te Mana Raraunga principles (including Rangatiratanga, Whakapapa, Whanaungatanga, Kotahitanga, Manaakitanga, Kaitiakitanga) as a sovereignty and stewardship lens — not as a marketing slogan. |
| NZ AI safety | AI features follow a NZ AI safety-aligned posture: Algorithm Charter spirit (fairness, transparency, human oversight where relevant), digital.govt.nz / responsible AI guidance awareness, no silent model training on private journals without consent, and HITL for high-stakes outcomes. |
| Security | No silent exfiltration; owner-controlled credentials; least privilege; SecOps / dependency hygiene on the fleet cadence. |
| Governance | Agents inform, draft, prepare; humans advise, sign, file, send, and pay. |
| Pillar | Commitment |
|---|---|
| Privacy | Local-first / offline-capable where practical; Privacy Act 2020; Te Mana Raraunga spirit; third-party AI only when opt-in and labelled |
| Security | No silent exfil of tenant or personal data; owner-controlled keys |
| Governance | HITL for high-stakes; Te Mana Raraunga spirit; multi-region compliance maps in COMPLIANCE_REGIONS.md |
Agents inform, draft, prepare, monitor, and remind. Humans advise, sign, file, send, and pay.
Fleet policy: fivepanelhat / Kiwi Edge AI Stack · COMPLIANCE.md · COMPLIANCE_REGIONS.md · SECURITY.md
SoilGuard targets soil moisture, nutrients, and nitrate-cap discipline for NZ whenua and pasture systems.
- Rural blackouts - Irrigation and compliance logs must not depend on cloud uptime.
- Nitrate caps - NES-F synthetic N limits create real fine risk without local evidence trails.
- Runoff and erosion - Over-irrigation and poor timing damage waterways and consents.
- Customary data rights - Whenua telemetry belongs under local custody (Te Mana Raraunga).
| Built capability | What it does |
|---|---|
| Multi-modal soil ingestion | Moisture, EC, N-P-K, vision, acoustic watchdogs |
| Local inference | Ollama / Gemma on RPi 5 + Hailo path |
| Actuation hooks | Irrigation / fertigation under HITL allow-lists |
| Council-ready ledgers | Export patterns for regional reporting |
| Lever | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Regional R&D HQ | Product design and IP stay in New Plymouth / Taranaki - not only Auckland/offshore SaaS |
| Primary-sector productivity | On-farm and rural tools aim to cut waste, protect consents, and support export competitiveness |
| Skilled employment pathways | Edge install, field support, agritech ops, software, compliance, and cultural advisory roles as pilots scale |
| Data sovereignty | Te Mana Raraunga-aligned local custody keeps high-value operational data onshore |
| HITL jobs quality | Agents inform / draft / prepare / monitor / remind; humans advise / sign / file / send / pay - augment people, do not fake full autonomy |
Stage honesty (pre-seed): Impact today is founder R&D, near-term contractors, and EDA/partner leverage. Permanent multi-region payroll follows paid pilots and revenue - we do not invent headcount claims.
Coastal Alpine Tech Limited pre-seed startup, New Plymouth, Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand. Edge AI | Sovereign Systems | Practical Intelligence
Autonomous on-premise soil quality monitoring and agricultural control system for New Zealand dairy farms, glasshouses, and orchards. Powered by local edge AI, it runs fully offline in remote and regulated rural catchments to maintain data sovereignty.
Diagrams: Architecture images and Mermaid maps describe the target product architecture for this pre-seed stack. They are engineering design maps not claims of large-scale commercial fleet deployment.
SoilGuard monitors soil health and fertigation on-device. Sensor streams and optional vision feed Gemma 4 via Ollama on RPi 5 16GB + Hailo-10H, with actuator lockouts for regulatory safety.
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flowchart TB
classDef sense fill:#052e16,stroke:#4ade80,stroke-width:2px,color:#f0fdf4
classDef edge fill:#0c4a6e,stroke:#38bdf8,stroke-width:2px,color:#f0f9ff
classDef core fill:#134e4a,stroke:#2dd4bf,stroke-width:2px,color:#f0fdfa
classDef act fill:#422006,stroke:#fbbf24,stroke-width:2px,color:#fffbeb
classDef store fill:#1e1b4b,stroke:#a5b4fc,stroke-width:2px,color:#eef2ff
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classDef app fill:#1e1b4b,stroke:#c4b5fd,stroke-width:2px,color:#eef2ff
subgraph IN[" Field inputs"]
S["Soil probes<br/>N-P-K | moisture | pH | EC"]
V["Vision optional<br/>leaf / canopy cues"]
end
subgraph EDGE[" Edge agent RPi 5 16GB + Hailo-10H"]
CORE["Coastal-Alpine-Core"]
LLM["Gemma 4 via Ollama"]
AG["SoilGuard AI agent"]
end
subgraph OUT[" Control & records"]
FERT["Fertigation lockouts / setpoints"]
ALERT["Operator alerts"]
STORE["Local telemetry | compliance logs"]
end
S & V --> CORE --> LLM --> AG
AG --> FERT & ALERT & STORE
class S,V sense
class CORE,AG core
class LLM ai
class FERT,ALERT act
class STORE store
| Layer | Components | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Sensors | N-P-K | moisture |
| Agent | Gemma 4 + Core SDK | Offline decisions |
| Safety | Fertigation lockouts | NES-F / regional rules |
| Hardware | RPi 5 16GB + Hailo-10H | Canonical edge target |
Full detail: ARCHITECTURE.md
- Who: Developed by Coastal Alpine Tech Limited intended for collaboration with NZ crop growers, dairy farmers, and iwi trusts (partnerships in development pre-seed).
- What: An edge-native IoT monitor and agentic control system that ingests soil telemetry (moisture, temperature, EC, N-P-K), visual leaf health cues, and acoustic diagnostics to optimize crop yield and generate council-ready environmental audits.
- Where: Deployed on-premise at nurseries, glasshouses, orchards, and pastoral runoff sites across New Zealand. HQ in New Plymouth, Taranaki.
- When: Active development as of June 2026.
- Why: Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer caps and Freshwater Farm Plan rules require farm operators to strictly manage soil runoffs and leaching. SoilGuard provides on-device data logging and localized automation without relying on vulnerable, non-sovereign cloud services.
- Multi-Modal Soil Ingestion: Real-time processing of moisture (%VWC), temperature, electrical conductivity, and dry-soil N-P-K nutrients via MQTT gateways.
- Leaf Quality Inspection: Local USB/CSI camera frame capture processed via local Gemma 4 multimodal vision prompts to identify signs of crop chlorosis, pest incursions, or drying.
- Acoustic Diagnostic Watchdog: Mic capture loop listening for irrigation equipment anomalies or valve blockages.
- Google Gemma 4 (
gemma4:e4b): Edge-quantized multimodal large language model executing offline on RPi 5 to assess conditions and issue control commands. - Automated Actuation: GPIO/PWM control loops for solenoid irrigation valves, nutrient fertigation pumps, and ventilation fans.
- Council-Ready Audits: Instant export of CSV ledgers and JSON traces matching Waikato and Horizons regional reporting specifications.
- Media Disk Protection: Active storage capacity management via media pruner that cleans old transient images/audio while preserving all compliance records.
SoilGuard-Portal/
|-- portal_schemas/ # Pydantic schemas (compliance, readings, plans)
|-- portal_core/ # Core modules (config, mqtt, av, hardware, pruner)
|-- telemetry_data/ # Local ledger dumps and transient media buffers
|-- tests/ # Unit and security stress test files
|-- main.py # Unattended orchestrator entrypoint
|-- validate.py # diagnostics boot sequences
|-- setup.py # pip installation setup script
|-- soilguard.service # Systemd service unit template
|-- requirements.txt # Production package requirements
|-- requirements-dev.txt # Unit test requirements
|-- .env.example # Local configuration template
|-- ARCHITECTURE.md # Mermaid sequence flows and layout mapping
|-- COMPLIANCE.md # NZ Legislative mapping details
-- README.md # Project user documentation- Raspberry Pi 5 (16GB RAM) Available locally via PB Tech or Kiwi Electronics.
- Raspberry Pi AI Accelerator / AI HAT+ 2 (40 TOPS, Hailo-10H NPU) Key for offline generative AI workloads.
- Soil Probes & ESP32 gateway Telemetry sensors broadcasting over MQTT.
- USB/CSI Camera Installed above crop canopy in IP67 enclosure.
We provide separate guides for system environment setup and installation for Windows and Linux users:
- Prerequisites & System Setup Guide: Read setup.md
- Installation Guide: Read installation.md
The fastest way to install is running the cross-platform bootstrap script:
python bootstrap.pyd-Portal python bootstrap.py
### Manual Installation & Run
1. **Clone the Portal Repository:**
```bash
git clone https://github.com/fivepanelhat/SoilGuard-Portal.git
cd SoilGuard-Portal
- Configure Virtual Environment:
Linux / macOS (Bash)
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install git+https://github.com/fivepanelhat/coastal-alpine-core.git@v0.2.0
pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
cp .env.example .envWindows (PowerShell)
python -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install git+https://github.com/fivepanelhat/coastal-alpine-core.git@v0.2.0
pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt
Copy-Item .env.example .envNote: If you receive an execution policy error, run
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSignedfirst.
- Deploy Gemma 4 Model:
ollama serve
ollama pull gemma4:e4b- Verify System Setup:
python validate.py- Start Orchestrator Daemon:
python main.py- Local Inference Latency: ~0.85 seconds per query running Google's
gemma4:e4bon Raspberry Pi 5. - Energy Consumption: Peak active NPU execution draw is ~1.5W, enabling solar-powered off-grid deployment.
- Storage Footprint: media pruner limits raw camera frame buffer size below 500MB, retaining compliance records for 7+ years in compressed format.
Built for New Zealand data sovereign, edge-native, compliance-aware. Questions or collaboration? Contact Coastal Alpine Tech Limited, New Plymouth, Taranaki.